The tourism industry is undergoing a fundamental transformation—from a “consumption-driven industry” to an “asset-driven industry.” On one hand, the global tourism market continues to expand at scale. According to World Bank data, tourism accounted for approximately 10% of global GDP in 2024, generating around USD 10.9 trillion in economic output and supporting approximately 357 million jobs worldwide. In 2023, international tourist spending reached approximately USD 1.9 trillion.
On the other hand, tourism-related assets—such as hotels, resorts, scenic area operating rights, and cash flows from integrated cultural and tourism complexes—have long remained constrained within traditional financial systems, characterized by low liquidity, ambiguous ownership structures, prolonged financing cycles, and insufficient transparency.
This creates a structural contradiction: the larger the industry and the richer the asset base, the lower the capital efficiency. Real World Assets (RWA) tokenization is emerging as a critical variable to resolve this imbalance. It represents not merely a financing innovation, but the construction of an entirely new financial infrastructure for the cultural and tourism sector.
Within this broader wave, DREAM ASCEND (DA) proposes a more ambitious approach: transforming asset ownership, financing, revenue distribution, and governance of tourism assets into a fully on-chain, verifiable, and automatically executable financial closed loop.
DREAM ASCEND is a global RWA digital finance platform designed for next-generation cultural and tourism assets. Its core objective is to connect high-end tourism and hospitality assets to blockchain-based financial systems, building a growth ecosystem centered on user co-creation and shared value.
Recently, DREAM ASCEND secured strategic investment from Chartres Lodging Group, a well-established U.S. hotel investment institution. The significance of such an investor extends beyond capital injection—it represents institutional validation of DREAM ASCEND’s asset model, risk management framework, and long-term sustainability. Public information shows that Chartres has long specialized in hotel and resort asset investment and management, with cumulative participation in hotel and resort investments exceeding USD 9 billion, and management of over 100 high-end hotel properties. This track record reflects a highly disciplined assessment standard for cash flow quality, operational efficiency, and exit pathways.
Why RWA Will Reshape Cultural & Tourism Finance
RWA (Real World Assets) refers to the compliant on-chain mapping and tokenization of real-world assets or income rights—such as real estate, receivables, or operating cash flows—granting them digital asset characteristics including divisibility, tradability, and programmable settlement.
In the context of the tourism industry, “tourism RWA” may take the form of hotel operating income rights, scenic ticket revenue rights, resort profit-sharing rights, or bundled membership benefits, all represented as on-chain credentials for ownership verification and circulation.
Its fundamental significance lies in transforming tourism assets from “hold-only” assets into allocatable financial instruments. This shift effectively places the tourism sector onto a REITs-like financialization trajectory, while leveraging on-chain settlement to reduce friction costs, enhance transparency, and achieve global accessibility.
Public industry data indicates that as of August 2025, the total on-chain RWA market size (excluding stablecoins) reached approximately USD 25.75 billion, with around 260 issuing entities. While still modest compared to traditional asset markets, the critical development lies in the changing composition of participants—from early crypto-native projects toward more institution-oriented asset management and compliance-driven structures.
For tourism assets, value does not reside solely in the physical property itself, but more importantly in long-term cash flows. Hotel RevPAR, occupancy rates, conference and F&B revenues, as well as scenic area foot traffic and ticket income can all be structured into quantifiable and auditable income rights. RWA provides a mechanism to digitize, fractionalize, and globally allocate these revenue streams, ultimately forming a new asset pricing paradigm.
The DREAM ASCEND Tourism Finance Flywheel
The ecosystem model of DREAM ASCEND can be summarized in one sentence:
High-quality assets go on-chain → global capital participates → revenues are distributed on-chain → value is recycled through incentives → more assets and users are attracted.
On the asset side, DREAM ASCEND selectively onboards high-quality hotels, scenic areas, and cultural tourism IPs, completing on-chain asset registration and rights structuring.
On the capital side, fractionalized digital shares attract global investors, lowering entry barriers and broadening capital sources.
On the operational side, operating cash flows and revenue distribution rules are executed via smart contracts, reducing human intervention, friction, and trust costs.
On the value side, the platform captures value through fees, service charges, and governance mechanisms, while redistributing part of the returns back to the community to form a positive feedback loop.
This positions DREAM ASCEND closer to a composite model of on-chain REITs + asset management platform + community governance system, rather than a simple token issuance project.
Future Outlook
The tourism industry has never lacked demand or assets; what it has lacked is a foundational structure capable of truly enabling asset financialization, transparency, and global integration. The emergence of RWA provides the tourism sector with its first systematic opportunity to connect operating cash flows, ownership structures, and capital allocation mechanisms.
The tourism RWA innovation represented by DREAM ASCEND carries far-reaching significance. By leveraging blockchain technology, it brings real-world hotel and tourism assets on-chain, using token economics to dismantle longstanding barriers in traditional tourism finance. At the macro level, the global tourism industry is vast and steadily growing, yet plagued by inefficient and imbalanced financing structures. DREAM ASCEND offers a forward-looking solution that connects global capital with localized tourism resources, enabling multi-party value creation.
Looking ahead, as DREAM ASCEND expands further into North America, Europe, and other major markets, builds a global DeFi/DAO ecosystem, and advances its compliance framework, the digital transformation of tourism finance is likely to accelerate rapidly. As real-world asset value is fully unlocked through blockchain technology, the cultural and tourism industry stands poised to unleash unprecedented vitality and enter a new era driven by the convergence of technology and finance.
Disclaimer: The views, suggestions, and opinions expressed here are the sole responsibility of the experts. No Just Examiner journalist was involved in the writing and production of this article.
